Heed the Silent Prophet
by LavenderQuetzal
Summary: Part three of Destroy the Human Keys. Alexis meets a mysterious deaf/mute boy who insists that she, Lena, Bradley, and another old friend - who they aren't sure they can trust - will soon save the world from an enemy thought defeated. Meanwhile, Lena and Bradley cope with magical puberty.
1. To Never Be Heard From Again

**Author's Note: It turns out I forgot to put a disclaimer on "Serve the Dragon Lord", so I'll just put two on here to make up for it.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Fablehaven. Brandon Mull does.**

**Disclaimer #2: I don't own Fablehaven.**

**Disclaimer #3: I also don't own the Avengers, Doctor Who, Twilight, Ninjago, Red River Valley, Harry Potter, Fruit Ninja, Star Wars, Animal Planet, Smiles to Go, Aladdin, or anything else I might have made a reference to. They all belong to their respective owners.**

**And now, on to the story.**

"Hey, this is my phone. Leave a message, unless you're Alexis, because chances are my battery will die halfway through your monologue. I'll call you back when I can!"

The recorded voice in Lena's ear switched from Bradley's to that of the answering machine lady. "At the tone, please record your message. When you are finished recording, you may hang up or press 'one' for more options."

Lena frowned. "Hi, Bradley, it's just Lena calling to say hi. It's been…," she checked the calendar on the wall, "…ten days since I last heard from you and I'm getting a little worried. Call me back! I miss you!" She hung up, put her cell phone back in her pocket, and pouted at her unfinished homework. Why did her pre-algebra teacher have to give her thirty questions every single night?

Her mental complaining was interrupted by the sound of the front door opening and a comically deep, off-key baritone bellowing some painfully botched lyrics.

"_Come sit by my side if you love me_!" Bracken sang, spinning into the house with his keys jangling in his right hand. "La dee da da, _to bid me adieu_…can't remember the rest of the wo-ords…_and the cowboy who loved you so true_!" He stopped singing and peered over Lena's shoulder. "Howdy, Princess. Whatcha working on?"

"Homework," she replied flatly.

"Really? On the weekend?"

"Yeah, Miss Stokes always gives too much homework. Every day."

"That's no fun. Where's your mother?"

"Down in the basement doing some laundry."

"Still? You'd think that a house of only three people would have a lot less clothes to wash." He set his keys on the counter and began to descend the stairs, restarting his song. "_From this valley they say you are going…to never be heard from again…_wait, that's not how it goes…"

The basement door closed and left Lena in near silence. She bit her lip and stared blankly at the first problem on her worksheet.

_If f(x)=2x-5, what is the value of f(6)?_

Before Lena could pick up her pencil to work out the problem, her phone vibrated in her pocket, startling her. She quickly answered without bothering to look at the caller ID. "Hello?"

"Hey, it's me," Alexis greeted on the other end. Lena could faintly hear some adventurous-sounding music and muffled explosions in the background. "I'm going to a concert for one of my dad's friend's kids with my dad this evening so my mom gave me twenty bucks to pay for the ticket and I've got like five hours until I have to go and the concert tickets only cost like six or seven dollars plus I think my dad's gonna pay for it anyway so I've got twenty bucks and five hours to burn and I'm bored."

"You don't sound like you're bored. What's that noise?"

"I'm just playing a video game. But it's a level that I've already passed, so yeah. Wanna go to Dairy Queen or someplace?"

"I have homework."

"No you don't, it's Saturday. Homework's a Sunday problem."

Lena laughed softly. "Okay, but your parents'll have to pick me up. Mine are busy."

"Nah, we'll just walk. It's not too far from my house. If you want, I could come over to your house and we could walk over together."

"Sure, why not?"

"Cool, I'll be over in a little bit. Maybe I'll ride my bike. Do you have a bike? Actually, bikes are no fun when you're with a friend, cus then you can't talk to each other. I'll just walk. Be there in a bit!"

The line disconnected. Lena put her phone back in her pocket and picked up her pencil, deciding to just work on her homework until Alexis arrived.

"_From this valley they say you are going," _she hummed to herself as she wrote down the answer to the first problem, mentally blaming her dad for getting the song stuck in her head. "_I shall miss your bright eyes and sweet smile…"_

XIXIXIX

Alexis took the walk to Dairy Queen as the perfect opportunity to catch Lena up on the gossip at school—the poor girl had only been at this school for two weeks. _Someone _had to get her up-to-date with who-likes-who and she-said-that. "So now Brenna's dating Donovan again even though she said she would let Samantha date him, and Samantha's like crushed to pieces cus she's like obsessed with Donovan."

"Wait, I thought Brenna was dating Eddie," Lena replied.

Alexis adjusted her large pink purse on her shoulder. "She was, but then he found out she still liked Donovan and he was all like 'Go ahead, follow your heart, I'll be fine' and he said he'd talk to Samantha cus he and her are like close friends and it was actually really sweet how he just helped Brenna be with Donovan again instead of getting all jealous."

"Aw, that is sweet!"

"I know, right? But now Samantha's upset cus of that so Eddie's trying to take her mind off Donovan and as far as I know, it's not working."

"That's too bad. Is that the Dairy Queen sign up there?"

"Yeah. You go on, let me tie my shoe quick."

Alexis bent down and picked up one of her loose shoelaces. It was a bit soggy from being dragged through the snow, but not too wet to touch. When she finished tying her shoe, she looked up and realized she was being watched.

A young boy stood staring at her from across the street. He was skinny and scruffy, with black hair that stood straight up in some places and light brown skin. He was wearing a thin, slightly worn black hoodie and faded blue jeans with ripped knees. He looked about twelve years old, and his dark eyes were twitching slightly but steadily fixed on Alexis. She called out a greeting and waved, but the boy didn't respond or look away, simply continuing to stare.

"Dude, Lena, come here," Alexis said. Lena turned and looked where Alexis pointed.

"I don't see anything," Lena said.

Alexis looked back at where the boy had been standing. "Whoa, where'd he go? He disappeared!"

"Who did?"

"This kid. He was right over there staring at me."

"Weird." Lena continued walking toward the restaurant. Alexis stood there for a moment, wondering where the boy could have gone, before shrugging and following her friend, who had already entered the building and was probably deciding what to order while she waited.

Alexis stepped up onto the curb edging the shrubbery-dotted median between the parking lot of Dairy Queen and that of the store beside it, walking on the thin raised block of concrete as if it was a balance beam, her purse swinging around as she did so. A bit of motion in her peripheral vision caught her attention, and she looked up to see the boy from across the street standing in an empty parking space in front of her. He was still staring at her, but his eyes were no longer twitching. His hands were hidden in the large front pocket of his hoodie.

"Hi," Alexis smiled, jumping down from the curb. "Has anyone ever told you that you're like a ninja or something? Cus you were just across the street like two seconds ago and now all of a sudden you're right here. How'd you get there without making any noise? And how'd you go so fast that Lena couldn't even see you when I pointed you out?"

The boy didn't respond, didn't move, didn't even blink.

"That _was _you, right? Or do you just have like a doppelganger or something? That'd be pretty cool actually, to have someone that looks just like you, cus then—" She stopped, noticing that the boy was still staring solemnly at her making no move to reply. "What's wrong?"

His hands moved subtly in his pocket.

"Can you talk?" Alexis inquired.

After a moment, the boy slightly shook his head.

Alexis frowned. "Well, that's too bad."

He nodded slowly, never removing his dark brown eyes from Alexis' face. After a moment of trying to ignore it in silence, Alexis became officially creeped out.

"Why are you staring at me like that?" she asked. "Hi, this is me, I'm Alexis Blaskenjoom, not really much to look at. Are you expecting me to do something crazy or something? At least try to sign language or something. Why can't you talk? Is it just that you don't know how or you don't have a voice or what?"

The boy moved his hands in his pocket again, as if shifting his grip on some hidden thing he held. There was a quiet clicking sound as he did, but not very noticeable.

"Do you want to say something?"

He gave a nod.

"Could you, like, write it down or something?" She reached into her purse, pulled out a tattered spiral notebook and a purple gel pen, and handed them to the boy. His eyes strayed from her face for the first time as he took his hands out of his pocket, grabbed the pen and notebook, opened to a blank page, and began writing. When he finished, he turned the notebook around to show Alexis. His handwriting was large, spiky, and slanted to the right, hardly legible.

_You are Charlotte von Zé?_

Alexis furrowed her brow. "Uh, no, I'm Alexis Blaskenjoom. My middle name is Charlotte, though, and it'd be cool to have a last name like that—"

The boy nodded and turned the notebook back around, quickly scrawling something else onto a different page. _You are friends with the daughter of light and the son of darkness. You have met a direct descendant of the somewhat infamous Patton Burgess._

She swallowed, realizing that he meant Lena, Bradley, and Will. "Yeah. Why? How'd you know that?"

The boy wrote one last thing in the notebook.

_You killed Aisha. The little shadow charmer girl._

Alexis shifted her purse on her shoulder and looked up from the paper to the boy's dark, emotionless eyes. They seemed to be staring straight into her, as if trying to read a soul that was trapped behind stone walls. The boy nodded again and put one hand back into his pocket.

"I-I'm sorry if you knew her, if you were friends with her," she said evasively. "But she was…she was, like, turning evil and stuff and trying to kill Lena and I just didn't know what to do and I was scared and I was already upset because…Look, it wasn't my fault."

He shook his head and let the hand holding the pen and notebook hang by his side, his other hand moving slightly in his pocket. Alexis' brown eyes lowered to the pocket as he began to pull something out of it. Something small, dark, and made of metal.

A simple black handgun, pointed directly at Alexis.

Before Alexis could even open her mouth to scream, he pulled the trigger. There was a loud boom, an explosion of pain through her body, and then nothing but blackness.


	2. Trapped and Freed

_A few weeks ago…_

Jenlauer tightened a leather strap around his leg and tucked a knife into the pocket it formed. Tollin was a few feet away, dipping some of his arrows into a small tub of clear liquid.

"Rinilia, have you got the changelings?" Jenlauer called. The lectoblix had yet to emerge from her bedroom. Jenlauer assumed that she was taking a little bit to enjoy her new youth before getting to work.

There was a loud thumping, as if a zombie wearing concrete shoes was descending a flight of stairs, and Rinilia emerged into the doorway, a scowl on her face. She looked much more healthy than the last time they had seen her, although considerably less awake. Her blonde hair was a bit longer, but quite messy and sticking straight up in some places. There were lines under her eyes from sleeplessness. Last night it would have been a compliment to call her thirty, yet now she could pass for nineteen.

"What are you two doing up?" she asked disdainfully.

Jenlauer let go of the leather strap he had just tightened. "Um, aren't we doing the thing today? Getting the kids and stuff?"

Rinilia's scowl deepened and she shook her head. "No need. I've decided we're not going to do it."

"But the meteor shower's this week," Tollin argued. "We've been planning this for months and if we're—"

"We're not doing it anymore!" Rinilia exclaimed. She leaned against the doorway and crossed her arms across her chest. "I don't want to do it anymore."

After a moment, they decided she was not going to say anything else. Tollin took off the quiver on his back and Jenlauer tossed his tetralanse to the ground. They stood in silence for a minute. Rinilia yawned and brushed a lock of hair out of her face.

"So how was he?" Jenlauer asked, his tone betraying that he wasn't really interested in the answer.

"Who?"

"The guy you drained last night," Tollin clarified. "What was his name? Tyler?"

"Oh." Rinilia licked her lips and closed her eyes. "Very nice. Jenlauer, you'll have to go clean him up soon, before it starts to smell."

Jenlauer groaned. "Again? You know, Tor—"

An elbow in the side from Tollin and a sharp glance from Rinilia cautioned Jenlauer not to mention Torina.

"—other lectoblixes usually leave some life in their victims instead of killing them all the way," he finished.

"And meanwhile, my bedroom is beginning to resemble fourteenth-century Europe in terms of odor," Rinilia quipped, gesturing toward the hallway.

"What?"

"The Black Plague, you idiot! Have you never taken a history class?"

"Sorry," Tollin replied. "We weren't actually there."

Rinilia's eyes widened in fury and she shot a dangerous glare at the dwarf. "Don't. Even. Start. Jenlauer, just go clean it up already."

Jenlauer resisted a sigh and walked out.

"So now what?" he called, pausing halfway up the stairs. "If we're not gonna do the thing—"

"You really have to ask me what to do with your life?" Rinilia scoffed back. "How old are you, fifteen? I'm not your mother. Go become a doctor, write a novel, whatever."

Jenlauer considered her words. "Well, I've got that medical degree still hanging around from a few years ago. I'd hate to let it go to waste."

XIXIXIX

_Beep._

_Beep._

"…he has been confirmed to be both deaf and mute due to knife wounds on his ears and throat, though it is unclear whether they are self-inflicted…"

_Beep._

_Beep._

_Beep._

"…there are no eyewitness accounts of the actual shooting; however, several patrons of the nearby Dairy Queen reported to have come out at the sound of the gunshot…"

Alexis opened her eyes. The beeping was coming from a small monitor beside her bed, measuring her heart rate; and the talking was from a little television in front of her. She sniffed, and immediately recognized the tell-tale odor that seemed like a mix between a clean public bathroom and a science lab where students were dissecting animals. She was in the hospital.

There was the sound of a door opening, drawing Alexis' attention away from the newscast, which had finished recounting her story and was now showing a commercial for toilet cleaner. She turned to see who was entering, accidentally sending pain shooting through her body. She grimaced and laid her fingers on the thin fabric of the hospital gown over the origin of the pain, a spot just above and a little to the right of her heart.

The man coming into the room crossed over to the monitor by Alexis and turned a dial on the side of it, silencing the beeping. He was tall with short brown hair, dressed in blue scrubs. His name tag, which was hanging on a black lanyard around his neck, read WAYNE PRICE.

"No need for that," he said. He turned, picked up a clipboard from a table by Alexis' bed, and clicked a pen hanging beside his name tag on the lanyard. "How are you feeling?"

Alexis stuck out her tongue.

"Any pain?"

She nodded and pointed to the spot that hurt the most—the spot where the strange boy had shot her.

The nurse scribbled something onto his clipboard. "How much does it hurt, on a scale of one to ten, ten being the worst?"

"Twelve," Alexis croaked. "But only when I move."

The nurse smiled slightly and set down. "Well then, just stay still. Another nurse will be back in a little bit with a painkiller. There's a remote by your bed if you want to change the channel." He gestured toward the television. "I don't know about you, but I'm not personally a fan of 'Antiques Roadshow'."

Alexis grabbed the remote, careful not to move too much, and started flipping through channels as the nurse started walking away, but then she noticed something. "Wait, I know you."

He stopped. "So did your friend, apparently." He turned around. "Is there seriously an alternate timeline where I actually went ahead and kidnapped her?"

"Wait, you did that, too?" Alexis replied. "I was just gonna say you're one of the guys who came to help us at Wyrmroost. Officer Kent's son. And the gas station lady's brother. You're one of the bad guys too? How come you're all those things at once? And since when are you a nurse, too? One at this hospital? I thought you lived in Illinois. Or were you just there cus the other dudes were there too? I mean, the bad guys. Wait, if you're the bad guy, why'd you help us? And why are you helping me now? Is this some sort of trap? Omigosh, it's a trap!"

She started to get up to try to escape or at least warn someone, but the pain in her chest forced her to lie back down and settle for glaring at the nurse, who had jumped up to keep her down.

"Settle down," he tried to say. "It's not a trap, and I'm not one of the bad guys. At least, not anymore."

Alexis narrowed her eyes. "Are you sure?"

He smiled. "Yes, I'm sure, but I don't blame you for being careful. Your friend was actually kicking me. Speaking of your friend, you should be really grateful she was close by when the incident happened. You probably wouldn't have survived if she hadn't immediately started healing you."

Alexis resisted a smile, struggling to keep an upset countenance. Her eyes moved to the name tag on his lanyard. "Why does your name tag say Wayne? I thought you had like some weird name like Joe-lour or something."

"Jenlauer. But here, I'm just Wayne. Or Nurse Wayne, if you like."

"Why can't I just call you Jenlauer?"

His smile widened. "Spell it. Then I'll let you use it." He started to head toward the door. "I'll get right back to you with that painkiller."

Alexis pursed her lips and kept a cautious eye on the door as Jenlauer—or rather, Wayne—exited. After the door closed and his footsteps receded down the hallway, Alexis relaxed and picked the remote back up. With any luck, she'd be out of here before he ever got a chance to spring his trap.

XIXIXIX

Courtney Lin rubbed her lips together, smacked them, capped her lip gloss, and admired her reflection. She tried out a few sexy faces, puckering her now-sparkly lips and placing her index finger against her cheek.

"Mm, mm," she hummed, grabbing the curling iron off the counter. Her long black hair was still straight as a rod, but that would soon be rectified. "From normal blah to ooh-la-la. Watch out, Bradley Hutchinson."

"Hurry up in there!" hollered her older brother, Eric, from outside the bathroom door.

"I'll hurry up when I wanna hurry up, dipface!" Courtney yelled back. She turned back to the mirror and continued curling her hair. "So what if he's already got a girlfriend? Didn't anyone ever tell him long-distance relationships never work? Besides, I bet she's just some ditzy blonde."

"Well, you're half right," her reflection replied. "I mean, she is blonde."

Courtney blinked hard and stepped back a little in surprise. "Did you just—"

Her reflection reached out one tan, slender arm and placed in on Courtney's forehead. Courtney's eyes rolled back in her head, and she slumped to the ground, dropping the curling iron.

She popped back up and gasped, her black hair flipping back as she did so. She licked her lips, wrinkled her nose, and stood up.

"You're gonna make us all late!" Eric yelled, pounding on the bathroom door.

"One moment!" Aisha shouted in Courtney's voice. She grinned. "Let's see—age fourteen, Asian, five-foot-three, one hundred twenty-one pounds, and just the right amount of curvy." She smirked and picked the curling iron back up. "Watch out, Bradley Hutchinson, indeed. Killing you again will be a delight."


End file.
